Bass Harbor Head Light Station, Bass Harbor Maine

Date added: January 30, 2024 Categories:

Light Tower and Keeper'S House, east and south sides (1990)

The light station at Bass Harbor Head was established in 1858 during a period of increased effort by the Federal government to provide aids to navigation along the coast. Its location at this site was designed to aid vessels coming into Bass Harbor, a small fishing village located to the northwest of the light. The station was automated in 1974.

Standing on a bold rock ledge, Bass Harbor Head Light Station consists of a circular brick tower connected to a one-and-a-half-story frame keeper's quarters. Detached from the tower is a small rectangular bell house, an oil house, and a barn.

The light tower, built in 1858, is twenty-six feet in height from its base to the original focal plane of the beacon. Its brick walls are punctuated by a pair of small windows facing Blue Hill Bay. Capped by a walkway and iron railing the tower supports a polygonal lantern whose iron base features paired round-arched panels in each face. A modern beacon has replaced the original lens. A narrow frame, covered passage supported on a stone foundation links the tower with the house. Its south wall is punctuated by a single small window and the exterior walls, like those on the keeper's quarters and bell house, are covered in replacement vinyl siding.

The T-shaped house has a three-bay front (west) elevation featuring a narrow vestibule at the northwest corner and a shed-roofed dormer centrally located on the roof. Like the tower, it was constructed in 1858. The window openings retain their six-over-six double-hung sash. There are four windows, two on each story, on the gable ends. A brick flue punctuates the roof and a second dormer is located on the rear elevation. The one-story ell, which was lengthened by ten feet in 1900, extends from the east elevation. In 1878 the house was raised ten inches and the original board-and-batten siding was replaced with clapboards. The clapboards have since been covered with vinyl siding.

Standing to the east of the tower is the bell house. This one-story brick building, erected in 1876, has a three-bay front elevation that faces the bay. Two six-over-six windows flank a narrow central opening, the bell was formerly supported by brackets and a boom which projected from the central pent roof. Its pent-gable ends are sheathed in clapboards, and each frames a window. At the rear is a door.

The brick oil house was added to the complex in 1902. It is typical of other oil houses built in Maine at this time and features a door and narrow ventilator in one gable end. A slate roof covers the small rectangular building.

Constructed in 1905, the barn is a rectangular frame building covered in clapboards. Three of its four walls are punctuated by windows while the fourth one has a door.

The compound on which the light station stands is bordered by a low concrete retaining wall. This is apparently a modern feature since it does not appear in early twentieth-century documentary photographs of the site.